Angelo Testa and Knoll

Another stand out for me in the Knoll Textiles’ catalogue is the work of Angelo Testa. A multi talented chap. He studied at László Moholy-Nagy’s design school in Illinois in 1945. I’m lucky to have a copy of Moholy-Nagy’s book Vision in Motion purchased by Frances Burke in 1947. The book features some of Testa’s student work.

In 1947 Testa produced this delicate work for Knoll representing an aerial view of farm fields. It’s called Campagna. The design stayed in the collection until 1964 and was reintroduced in 1997.

Knoll was interested in creating a vocabulary. They selected a limited number of designs from the artists and then reproduced them in many different colours over many years. They also got to experiment with different textiles to create different effects using the same design.

In 1958, “We have tried out Campagna on our K90 cloth and although the design is by now admittedly old and well know, it looks so beautiful on the sheer Linen/Dacron gauze that we decided to add it to our line”.